


No Warning

by Wallwalker



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Character Study, Community: 100_leitmotifs, F/M, Ficlet, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-02
Updated: 2009-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:39:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/pseuds/Wallwalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rinoa needs to understand her parents. But the video she's watching doesn't seem to be them at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Warning

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [100 Leitmotifs](http://community.livejournal.com/100_leitmotifs) at Livejournal.

"With this ring, I thee wed."

_Wait... rewind it a couple of seconds..._

"With this ring, I..."

_Stop. Do it again, keep an eye on her face._

"With this ring..."

_Okay, okay... no, maybe it's his face..._

Rinoa sighed and dropped the remote in her lap, leaving the image of the bride and groom frozen on the screen. Her mind felt like a frightened bird... if she could just concentrate, she was sure that she'd see what she had been missing.

The TV-VCR combo was hers, a castoff from a friend at the academy that she had smuggled into her room. It wasn't great - the picture kept fading out at the strangest moments - but she'd get a better one later. The tape, on the other hand, was definitely not hers; she knew very well that someone would be very angry when he discovered that she'd swiped it from his private office. But she really didn't care what _he_ thought of anything she did anymore.

It was really weird. She knew exactly who the people in the tape were, but they might as well have been strangers. It was impossible to draw a connection between the smiling couple and the parents she'd had once. That beautiful dark-haired young woman with the radiant smile was barely recognizable as the mother who had died when Rinoa had been very young. And the man... that man with the black hair and the impeccable uniform and the smiling face... he certainly wasn't the same man that Rinoa didn't like to call a father anymore. They were so young, and so... so happy.

Rinoa had watched her mother being escorted down the aisle by an impassive fat man with grey hair, a shy smile on her face as the general had taken her hand. She was a perfect blushing bride... and _he_ seemed like such a gentleman to her. The bride wasn't that sad-eyed woman who had tearfully told Rinoa never to give up on the man she truly loved when she was old enough to understand, never to make the same mistakes she'd made. The groom wasn't the cold-hearted man who had withdrawn so completely when his wife had died that Rinoa didn't even remember ever seeing him cry. They seemed to be as much in love as any hero and heroine in a cheap pulp novel.

Rinoa sighed. She was only thirteen, true, but she thought she knew a couple of things about the world. She was sure that if falling in love with someone could make a woman marry someone who turned out to be so stone-faced and uncaring, could make them forget someone else they loved until it was too late... if that was the case, she never wanted to fall in love. She'd rather keep her heart than let it be messed up like that.

Frowning, she picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV. She had to finish the tape. There had to have been some sign of what would happen between those two, something that everyone else had missed. She had to find it, if only to prove something to herself.

She pushed the button and started the tape again.

"...I thee wed."


End file.
